Comms Dealer

Tollring's growing presence in the cloud space has prompted the company to create a new role, hire staff and promote from within.

The firm has expanded its partnerships with companies offering cloud services such as BT, Mitel and BroadSoft, and appointed Scott Ellis as Head of Cloud Sales, a new business development role.

He will be working with senior management to sell iCall Suite and iC360 to Service Providers, System Integrators and Value Added Resellers in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world.

Chris Slater has most recently been appointed as Head of Product and will focus on delivering a strong product roadmap as we continue to expand our Analytics Portfolio. He will be instrumental in aligning product evolution with our partner requirements.

Hilary Oliver joined Tollring in 2012 and has been promoted to Marketing Director, taking a seat on the Board. Her 20 years of B2B and tech marketing experience lay the foundation for her continued focus on channel GTM support alongside overall corporate marketing and product branding.

Tony Martino, MD of Tollring, said: "These appointments are indicative of our company's success. Both Scott and Chris have strong experience in call recording having spent several years at Enghouse Networks, formally CTI Group, and as a result we see them being able to add immediate value in supporting the business as we expand our partner reach. We continue to evolve our cloud products and services in line with customer needs and are committed to supporting and empowering our channel in all areas."

Pictured (l-r): Hilary Oliver, Chris Slater and Scott Ellis

Gradwell Communications CEO Nick Thompson is stepping down after three years at the firm, making way for incoming chief exec Simon Mewett, the former CEO of Westbourne-based ISP C4L which was acquired by Selection Services Investments for £20.2m a year ago.

Previous roles include leadership positions within INS and Easy Group.

Peter Gradwell, founder and CTO of the Bath-based business, commented: "We look forward to working with Simon and leveraging his all-round business expertise."

Mewett's remit is to drive forward the company's strategy and provide a solid platform for future growth. He said: "I look forward to building compelling customer propositions."

Bath-based Gradwell Communications was founded in 1998 and now has 70-plus employees. Its solutions are currently used by over 22,000 small businesses and partners across the UK.

IP Integration has been awarded the Avaya 2016 Strategic Win Award for the Asia region.

IP Integration was responsible for securing and fulfilling a major installation of Avaya's contact centre solution for ESL, the international gaming organisation.

Combining the Avaya solution with a selection of its own complementary tools, IP Integration specified and managed the roll-out of an omni-channel contact solution with full personalisation attributes.

Picture shows Dave Glasgow, Sales Director at IP Integration (left) and Ritchie Butters, Account Director at IP Integration with the Avaya award.

Gamma has sealed an access agreement with CityFibre to connect 15 data centres and exchanges across the UK over CityFibre's long-distance and metro networks.

This upgrade will enable Gamma to meet growing demand for its data services and enable the delivery of higher speed services to an increasing number of larger enterprises and public sector customers.
 
The agreement, which runs through to 2042, will deliver multi-terabit core and multi-gigabit access speeds using 1,300km of dark fibre in a fully resilient ring configuration, between Manchester and London.

Andy Rawnsley, Chief Architect at Gamma, said: "We are always looking to increase our capacity and the range of innovative services we can offer. CityFibre's national long distance network is an ideal mechanism for us to deliver the speed, resilience and flexibility we need in our core network. We look forward to exploring how else we might work together in the future."
 
Rob Hamlin, Commercial Director at CityFibr,e added: "We are delighted to welcome Gamma on-board as CityFibre's first partner to access our long distance network on a national basis. The project demonstrates our capability to offer unified long distance and metro fibre solutions to national service providers."

Hosted telephony provider NTA and call recording firm Oak Innovation are working together to provide fully compliant on-premise call recording for NTA customers.

The Oak call recorder for NTA includes AES 256bit encryption to safeguard recordings in line with FCA guidelines, PCI card payment suppression, and infinite storage space. The call recorder can also be used for training and monitoring staff, managing business performance, and resolving customer disputes.

"It was an obvious partnership," said NTA Sales Manager Justin Blaine. "We already had a call recorder, but it wasn't PCI and FCA compliant."

Oak CTO Phil Reynolds added: "NTA uses a channel model based on the number of extensions likely to be in use at any one time. This means that NTA resellers potentially pay less for their services, and the end user gets a high-performing system for less. It's an attractive proposition, and the addition of extension-side call recording from Oak creates a solution that ticks a lot of boxes."

Wales-based finance house Henry Howard Finance (HHF) has scooped the Finance Monthly Game Changer Award 2017.

Winners of the annual award are determined by the views of thousands of voters - including investors, analysts, C-level executives, employees and media professionals - before researchers shortlist businesses based on key achievements, including profit or revenue growth, market expansion or launching innovative products.

Mark Crook, group chief operating officer of Henry Howard Finance, said: "To be recognised by Finance Monthly for our work is a fantastic honour and is a great way for us to kick-start 2017. Industry opinion remains a core priority for us and we're pleased to have had such positive feedback."

HHF is hoping that success comes in threes, after also being shortlisted for two other awards. The company beat more than 300 other applicants in the financial technology industry to make the shortlist of Financial Sector Innovation of the Year award at this year's FSTech Awards, and has also been nominated for Asset Based Finance Broker of the Year at the Business Moneyfacts Awards 2017.

These successes follow a triumphant 2016 that saw HH Vendor Finance, a specialist lender for the telecommunications sector, scoop the title of Best Channel Business Service at the Comms National Awards, as well as a Product of the Year: Professional Services award at the Comms Business Awards.

A key ingredient to the company's recent success has been the creation of 'HowApp', a deal management portal that allows vendors to set up finance packages tailored to their clients' needs, in as little as 20 seconds.

"Since we started business more than 20 years ago, we've looked to be innovative in every market we're involved in," said Crook. "That includes developing the 'How App', which has given customers of HHF the opportunity to set up credit agreements both quickly and safely, thanks to anti-money laundering, fraud and ID checks.

"We intend to define our 2017 and beyond with further growth and award success, while maintaining and improving our emphasis on customer service."

Henry Howard Finance supports more than 20,000 UK businesses across a variety of sectors.

Oak's Richard Garel-Jones has been promoted to the role of Voice Processing Director. He joined the firm 18 years ago and has gained experience as an engineer, account manager and product manager.

Oak's CTO Phil Reynolds stated: "Richard will be working closely with key reseller partners to create new opportunities to grow sales of call recording and quality measurement solutions. It's a key time for Oak, with several major product releases in the pipeline for 2017."

Garel-Jones added: "Our most recent solutions have been developed with an eye to the future. They are designed and built around the customer to provide greater choice, enhanced features, and better integration than ever. Our focus now is on showing Oak's capabilities to our partners and their customers."

More than half (51%) of businesses are expected to adopt cloud Unified Communications (UCaaS/Hosted PBX) by 2020, surpassing premise-based PBX as businesses of all sizes shift to the cloud for unified communications, team collaboration and contact center services, according to the 2nd Annual BroadSoft survey of global telecom providers and industry leaders.

The results show that respondents expect the UCaaS/Hosted PBX share of new lines shipped to reach 51% by 2020, a 10 percentage point increase from last year's survey results. The most significant change in optimism for cloud adoption is occurring in the large enterprise segment, where telcos expect 45% of large enterprises to adopt UCaaS/Hosted PBX by 2020 - a 25 percentage point increase from last year's survey.

"We've come to a tipping point because the old PBX systems that powered communications are on their way out and are no longer being replaced or upgraded with like for like. The cloud is viable, broadband can accommodate it, the PBX vendors are no longer around and workers need more mobility," said Taher Behbehani, chief digital and marketing officer, BroadSoft.

"All of this points towards cloud adoption. We are finally reaching the stage where technology will help improve the way people work rather than dictate how they should do it."

While mobility is a key priority for enterprises, the user experience of real-time unified communications on mobile delivered OTT has not quite kept pace. For this reason, native mobile integration - which delivers an integrated mobile experience within the device's native mobile dialer - has emerged as a key user experience driver for businesses. 89% of survey respondents believe that native mobile integration is an important requirement for mobile solutions. At the same time, results show over 90% of UC business users will require mobile integration - an opportunity for telcos in 2017 to deliver a superior native end-to-end mobile business experience.

Along with UC, contact centre solutions are also rapidly shifting to the cloud. By 2020, survey participants forecast that 43% of contact center seats will be cloud based. 84% of survey respondents also consider predictive analytics functionality to be important to end-users, suggesting businesses will increasingly seek analytics-based cloud contact center solutions that integrate with UC and team collaboration applications to enhance the customer experience.

Team collaboration is emerging as a key opportunity for telecom providers, a notable trend as enterprise messaging apps gain traction in the enterprise. 78% said team collaboration is an important end user requirement in their respective markets, while 95% believe integrating team collaboration into their UCaaS offers represents a significant business opportunity.

Behbehani added: "Our survey also indicates the threat landscape has changed. Telcos increasingly view OTT UCaaS vendors as a threat, and are less concerned with premise and niche SaaS vendors. Telcos able to deliver a complete solution that integrates UC with contact center and team collaboration can differentiate their offering - not only from OTT UCaaS upstarts, but from leading global IT and consumer brands as well."

Olive Communications has been awarded Platinum Cloud Service Provider status from Mitel, becoming the only UK company to hold Mitel's highest accreditation for the cloud.

"This is a fantastic accolade which demonstrates our commitment to customer excellence and provides market recognition for being the leader in the provision and management of cloud communication solutions," said Nick Beardsley, Enterprise Director at Olive.

"Our brand in this area is going from strength to strength and this accreditation will help us to continue to show meaningful market differentiation and value."

Simon Skellon, UK VP at Mitel, added: "This accreditation recognises Olive's focus, training and expertise in Mitel Cloud solutions for the benefit of its customers."

Olive has recently successfully implemented World Cloud projects for a number of key clients such as OneFamily, Bibby Financial Services and Laithwaite's Wines.

Openreach has launched a digital mapping tool to make it easier for CPs to plan and build their own fibre broadband networks using the company's nationwide network infrastructure.

The digitised network maps provide an interactive view of the company's national network of underground ducts, telephone poles and cable chambers.

Openreach hopes that the new web-based maps will encourage more fibre broadband networks to be built across the country as companies will be able to carry out more work themselves, more quickly and efficiently, without seeking permission from Openreach.

Such companies will no longer need to request static records and network diagrams from Openreach when planning their own broadband networks.

Openreach will be adding further enhancements to the service over the coming months, including a tool that shows how much capacity is available in each duct and which parts of the network have been reserved for building work by other companies already.

There will also be a tool for CPs to download the underlying data and add it to their own geographical mapping systems.

The mapping tool follows the announcement last summer that the company is conducting trials with five communications providers to test new, simplified duct and pole sharing processes across the UK. These have since moved from trial to full launch in January.

Clive Selley, CEO, Openreach, said: "As our infrastructure already exists, CPs will be able to build and expand their fibre network in far quicker timescales than if building it from scratch. The mapping tool further enhances that process - giving CPs exactly the same level of access to our network data as Openreach.

"Our ducts and poles have been open to these companies for several years, and Ofcom has been clear that the price to access them is in line with international comparisons, but they haven't been used on a large scale to date. We hope that these new, simpler processes - which have been designed and developed in partnership with the industry - will encourage more companies to invest, particularly in parts of the UK that aren't already served by high-speed networks."